Thank you! You have prompted my entry into this vexing discussion.
I have not entered actively into this discussion except once, when I suggested that soul was the proper term to use. I believe I said, at that time, that the problems was in using game-specific words to discuss non-game specific concepts. If that conflict is not resolved clearly, all subsequent discussion will be fraught with unnecessary heat.
FIRST, THE EXOTERICNESS OF THIS DISCUSSION Few people in Glorantha would ever discuss the issues being bandied about here. Most people there, as here, are concerned with their next meal and whether they can get through the day without being hurt. Individuals lucky enough to be sure of those factors are concerned with prestige and betterment of their lives. Most people spend a portion of their life to be sure to live in harmony with their spiritual overseers or guardians. People with those things assured may make an effort to understand loftier and more unified goals such as cross cultural religious studies. A teensy number may make the near-impossible effort to actually understand overarching concepts of the immaterial realms, as per this discussion.
THESE ARE GAME TERMS, NOT GLORANTHAN ONES
Gloranthans don?t speak English. The words souls, spirit and essence
do not exist for them. They don?t know about the RuneQuest or
HeroQuest games. If we were there and tried to talk to them
(presumably in their own language) then it would sound like someone
trying to talk to us about our daily lives knowing only the terms from
Monopoly.
They would have unifying terms for these things, and if translated,
would probably be similar to the terms that I?d use, which are listed
below.
GAME VOCABULARY
The need of the game was to have differentiating terms, not unifying ones.
In writing HeroQuest I had to make some hard decisions concerning
vocabulary. This discussion is confined to only the one at hand here.
A major choice I had to make was concerning these words for the
spiritual portion of an individual.
For a while I considered theist-souls and animist-souls and
sorcery-souls; and theist-spirits, animist-spirits and
sorcery-spirits; and even (briefly) theist-essences, animist-essences
and sorcery-essences. This last was brief, but there was for a time
the concept of the etheric double, as well.
But in the end, I drew back from trying to make this an actual
teaching document, since it?s just a game, and I went with the terms
used because one word is always better than two for a core term.
Thus I took modern spiritual terms and narrowed them down intensely
for specific game use.
This necessarily crippled any discussion, such as this one, which
needs unitary terms.
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
One possible solution is to use the terms in the manner that everyone
decides they will be used, and deliberately understand that they are
NOT being used in the narrow game term.
In such a case, I?d suggest:
Soul: the immaterial, immortal, unchangeable part of a person.
Spirit: the immaterial, immortal, changeable part(s) of a person.
Essence: the immaterial, mortal, changeable part of a person (core
personality).
> Failing that, personae, singular persona?
I would suggest that this is not suitable.
Persona is a mask, the most external part of a person. It?s
superficial, external and often as much a projection of the observer
as a deep part of the observed.
SO WHAT CAN BE USED TO DISCUSS IT IN GAME TERMS?
No suitable English term is possible. I used up the ones that might be used.
I?d suggest one term that is precise and exact, will not be mistaken
for something else, and is perhaps just well enough known to not be
entirely alien.
ATMAN is that word.
I would suggest using Atman as the ?generic? term to describe the
immaterial, immortal, unchangeable part of a person.
Issaries, Inc.
c/o Greg Stafford
1942 Shattuck AVe, #204
Berkeley, CA 94704 USA
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